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Journal article
The Cuttack Mission Press and Early Oriya printing
REFERENCES to early printing in the distinctive script of Oriya, the Indo-Aryan vernacular of Orissa, the region of India to the south-west of Bengal, are very scarce indeed.The attention of scholars has naturally enough tended to focus upon Bengal in the context of early printing in northern India, especially in...Shaw, Graham W.
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Deterioration in leather bookbindings - our present state of knowledge
DETERIORATION in leather and the mechanism by which deterioration proceeds has been a subject for investigation by the British Leather Manufacturers' Research Association over a number of years. Leather is widely used, not only for clothing, upholstery, and bookbinding, but in industry for machinery drive belts, hydraulic seals, etc. and...Haines, Betty M.
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Journal article
Patrick Cary: a sequel
To place the recently acquired manuscript of Italian poems attributed to Patrick Cary more exactly in context and to dispel any doubts concerning his authorship I should like to bring together some scattered information. I should also like to discuss further sources regarding the last few years of his life.Willetts, Pamela
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Learning to read: Friedrich Gedike's primer of 1791
IN a culture still as firmly based as ours on written language, it is hardly possible to overestimate the importance to the individual and to society of the skill of reading. It gives a degree of power, through access to recorded information, from the simple signals of everyday life to...Paisey, David
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Notes on some manuscripts of Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes
IN one of the scrap-books of the notorious collector John Bagford (1650-1716), which are now part of the Harleian collection, is preserved a hitherto unnoticed leaf from a manuscript of Thomas Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes. It is a single parchment leaf (Fragment 90, MS. Harley 5977), mounted on a guard,...Green, R. F.
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Journal article
Pietro Bembo's L'Histoire du Nouveau Monde
THE third volume of Giovanni Battista Ramusio's Delle Navigationi et Viaggi was first published in Venice by Giunti in 1556.' It included an account of the first Spanish descent to the River Amazon made during 1542. This account was written by Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557), and sent...Norvell, Lyn
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Journal article
Italian City and regional statutes 1473-1600, in the British Library
WITH the purchase in September 1974 of the printed statutes of Bologna, a book which was completed shortly after 28 February 1475, the British Library increases its holdings of the products of the first press in Bologna, that of Baldassare Azzoguidi, from fourteen to fifteen out of a total of...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
Foreign bookbindings added to the department of printed books from 1963 to 1974
IN volume 1, number 2 of The British Library Journal I discussed some of the English bindings acquired by the Department of Printed Books since 1962. This article followed others on acquisitions from 1941 to 1950, from 1952 to 1962, and in 1962, which appeared respectively in the British Museum...Nixon, Howard M.
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NOTE: William Godwin's 'Damon and Delia'
The British Library has recently acquired this early novel by William Godwin of which no copy was hitherto known to be extant. It is known that Godwin wrote three novels in 1783-4; his manuscript autobiographical notes, quoted by C. Kegan Paul in William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries (1876), record...Archibald, Jean
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Journal article
A Khamsa of Nizami dated Herat, 1421
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has recently acquired a Persian manuscript (Or. 13802) dated Herat, 824 (1421), which is illustrated by miniatures of considerable interest and importance, both stylistically and historically. The work consists of 794 folios containing the five poems (Khamsa) of Nizami (d. 1203) written...Titley, Norah M.
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Journal article
Innocence and experience in the poetry of Andrew Marvell
ANDREW MARVELL is the most enigmatic of English writers. Aubrey tells us that he was merry and cherry-cheeked, but that he would not drink in company, keeping, nevertheless, some bottles of wine in his lodgings 'to refresh his spirits and exalt his muse'. Nearly all the poems on which his...Lord, George De F.
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Journal article
Joseph Timothy Haydn, of Dictionary of Dates fame: 'a long and laborious life, writing chiefly for the publishers'
'Is it for this', Robert Hurton's melancholy scholar asks, 'we rise so early all the year long, leaping (as he saith) out of our beds, when we hear the bell ring, as if we heard a thunderclap? If this be all the respect, reward, and honour we shall have ....Myers, Robin
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Journal article
John Webber's South Sea drawings for the admiralty: a newly discovered catalogue among the papers of Sir Joseph Banks
THE Department of Manuscripts in the British Library, a treasure-house of many little-known works of art which one might not expect to find there, preserves more than 150 drawings and water-colours by the British artist John Webber (1750-93). The late Martin Hardie, a connoisseur of the British water-colour school, praised...Joppien, Rudiger
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Journal article
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, Slavonic Division
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, Slavonic Division.Chrastek, D. B.
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Some notes on Andrew Marvell : Marvell before and after the continental tour 1642 and 1647
THE precise limits of Marvell's four-year tour of the Continent during the 1640s, attested in Milton's letter to Bradshaw of February 1653 and in poems such as 'Fleckno, an English Priest at Rome', have been the subject of much speculation. Thanks to Mrs Burdon's article in the previous number of...Kelliher, Hilton
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Journal article
Pictorial printing in Chinese books: three examples from the seventeenth century
CHINA, the country of origin of both paper and the printed word, was also the first to print book illustrations. However, it is the Japanese achievement in this field that has captured the imagination of the outside world, as was so eloquently and reflectively demonstrated by my colleague David Chibbett,...Brown, Yu-Ying
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Journal article
Brother and sister: new George Eliot letters
ON 20 July 1854 Mary Ann Evans, who two and a half years later was to assume the nom de plume George Eliot, left London for an excursion to Germany in the company of George Henry Lewes, and henceforward until his death they lived together as man and wife. She...Burnett, T. A. J.
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Journal article
Books from Japanese circulating libraries in the British Library
Over the last ten years there has been in Japan a steady growth of interest in the circulating libraries known as kashihonya and in due course this bids fair to make a valuable contribution to the study of the rise of literacy in Japan in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). Some...Kornicki, P. F.
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Journal article
Marvell after Cambridge
MARVELL'S movements on first leaving Cambridge have never been known to his biographers. Exactly when he left Trinity College is also in doubt, but it is clear that by September 1641 he had been absent for an unacceptable length of time. If it is a fact that he ran away...Burdon, Pauline
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Journal article
David Hume, De Unione Tractatus Secundus
THE description of MS. Royal, 12 A.53 in the British Library catalogue states that 'it does not appear to have been printed'. Indeed it was not; but two letters in the Public Record Office indicate that it did very nearly achieve publication in France in 1610, some five years after...Lindley, David
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Journal article
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1965-1975: English books 1641-1700
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1965-1975: English books 1641-1700Jannetta, M. J.
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Journal article
Some early English editions of Voltaire
ON Friday 10 May 1726 it would seem that Voltaire left Calais in the Betty to cross the Channel by the regular service and to arrive the following morning, 30 April, at Gravesend. The shift from Gregorian to Julian calendars, only removed by England's adoption of New Style some twenty-six...Barber, G.
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Journal article
The Ayrton Papers: music in London, 1786-1858
RECENTLY acquired papers of William Ayrton (1777-1858), musician and critic, sometime Director of the Italian opera at the King's Theatre, and editor of the Harmonicon, proved to be the residue of the collection of Ayrton's correspondence and papers presented by Miss Phyllis Ayrton, his great-granddaughter, in 1964. The new collection...Willetts, Pamela
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Journal article
Reconstruction of a Liège psalter-hours
IN the sad history of crimes against books, British Library Add. MS. 28784 must be placed high on the list of scrapbooks headed by the Carmelite Missal, Add. MSS. 29704-29705. When acquired by the British Museum in 1871 Add. MS. 28784 was composed of a complete late fifteenth-century book of...Oliver, Judith
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Journal article
A new account of Waterloo: a letter home from Private George Hemingway of the Thirty-third Regiment of Foot
ACCOUNTS by participants of the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo are not numerous and most of those written by British ones were elicited some twenty years after the event by the questionnaire of the enterprising Captain Siborne. Surviving accounts of Waterloo written by private soldiers must be very rare...Waley, Daniel
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Journal article
Additional Sheridan papers: Add.MSS. 58274-58277
A QUANTITY of political papers, mostly speech notes, and miscellanea of Richard Brinsley Sheridan have recently been added to the Department of Manuscripts' holdings of Sheridan family material. The new acquisition had once been part of the Sheridan papers preserved at Frampton Court, Dorset, and had been sold by auction...Smith, R. A. H.
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Journal article
Paul Hirsch and his music library
ON 16 July 1946 the lovely garden of 10 Adams Road, Cambridge, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Hirsch, was the scene of a party given for the seventieth birthday of Edward Dent, who had been Professor of Music in the University from 1926 to 1941. It was a...King, Alec Hyatt
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Journal article
An addition to the Faust literature: an unknown 'harrowing of hell' in the British Library, London
THE spread of material on the subject of Faust began in the sixteenth century with the existence of Faust as an historical figure, and with the appearance of a 'Faust-trilogy' (Faust-Buch of 1587, Wagner-Buch of 1593, Fausts Gaukeltasche of 1607). The subject entered English literature with an English version of...Henning, Dr. Hans
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Journal article
The artist of the Leviathan title-page
FEW title-page designs, if any, can rival the success of that bluntly eloquent engraving which prefaces the first edition (1651) of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Though it was re-used for two further editions in the author's own lifetime, successive reproductions have given it far wider currency since its reappearance in the...Brown, Keith
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Journal article
Notes : The Laurence Nowell Manuscripts in the British Library
For centuries historians have asserted that the Laurence Nowell who transcribed old chronicles with William Lambarde, the sixteenth-century antiquary of Kent, was a churchman, the Dean of Lichfield. A careful reading of the facts in a 1571 Court of Requests case has recently disclosed that this belief is unfounded.Warnicke, Retha M.
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Journal article
Notes: Richard Hodges and Stowe Manuscript 15
This note is intended to explain the relationship between Stowe Manuscript 15 and Richard Hodges, whose name appears on folio 12v with the date 1545. The manuscript is a small volume of ninety-two vellum folios containing diverse subjects dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. It was originally begun...Alsop, J. D.
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Journal article
The Poppelauer catalogues of Hebraica and Judaica
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has been fortunate enough to acquire a unique and almost complete set of the Catalogues of Hebraica and Judaica issued by M. Poppelauer of Berlin between 1887 and 1929. Twenty-seven catalogues were issued, and the only (but important) one missing from the...Goldstein, David
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Journal article
Some hitherto unpublished Panizziana from Italy
THE municipal library in the quiet and elegant city of Reggio Emilia is a hitherto unexplored treasure house of unpublished Panizzi material. It was at Reggio that Antonio Panizzi spent four years at the ginnasio and met Gaetano Fratuzzi, the retired Professor of Rhetoric and librarian at that library, who...Reidy, Denis V.
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Journal article
A purchase of books in 1615
WHILE making a study of manuscript annotations and marks of provenance in English incunabula for the forthcoming volume of B.M.C. xi, I was pleasantly surprised to come upon a priced list of twenty-three books, transcribed below, in a copy of the English translation of Cicero's De Senectute printed by Caxton...Nickson, M. A. E.
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Journal article
Antonio Panizzi and the British Museum
ANTONIO GENESIO MARIA PANIZZI was born on 16 September 1797 in the little town of Brescello in the Duchy of Modena in northern Italy. Though no more than the son of the local chemist, he had received a sound education, in Brescello itself, in Reggio, and at the University of...Miller, Edward
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Journal article
Four Strasburg incunables incorrectly assigned to Anton Koberger of Nuremberg
Four incunables, undated and anonymous as to place and printer, have for many generations been assigned to the Nuremberg press of Anton Koberger, and have in fact been classed as his very earliest productions. 1. Johannes Nider, Manuale confessorum. fol.: a-e10 f8, 58 leaves. Hain, *11834; Goff, N-178; Proctor, 1961;...Needham, Paul
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Journal article
Notes: Italian printed statutes: a correction
In my recent brief account of the printed Italian statutes in the British Library, I made one misleading statement when I failed to mention the statutes of the Duchy of Savoy, of which the Library has three editions printed before 1600. I wrote: 'It will be noted that certain important...Rhodes, D. E.
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Journal article
Hilarius Cantiuncula and his book of poems
THE present brief investigation arose out of the discovery of an unfortunate error in the British Museum's Short-title Catalogue of Italian Books 1463-1600 (1958), where on page 327 we read the following entry: 'Hilarius, a writer of Latin verse in Germany. Cantiunculae hendecasyllaborum liber. Apud P. Petramsanctam: [Gualtiero Scotto:] Venetijs,...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
A reappraisal of the Bedford Hours
ALREADY well known to bibliophiles at the time of its purchase in February 1852, the Bedford Hours has ever since been justifiably regarded as one of the star attractions of the national collection. Some of its illustrations, especially the lively miniatures of Noah's Ark, have become famous through frequent reproduction...Backhouse, Janet
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Journal article
Two eighteenth-century manuscripts on the geography of the Levant
A MANUSCRIPT on my bookshelves contains a collection of geographical and other notes relating to Greece and Asia Minor. It has no title, and is unsigned. It was written during a period of years beginning before 1739, probably before 1733, and continuing at least until 1749. Among its contents are...Salt, George
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Journal article
Bookbinding practices of the Hering family, 1794-1844
THE English poet and essayist Robert Southey, describing, in the guise of a Spaniard, the manners and morals of his countrymen, noted in 1807, that 'there is, perhaps, no country in which the passion for collecting rarities is so prevalent as in England.' This passion was turned by large numbers...Marks, Judith Goldstein
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Journal article
Department of Printed Books: German popular literature as seen in some recent antiquarian acquisitions
Systematic acquisition of foreign literature for the British Museum library began in 1834 with regular Government funding, and, particularly under Panizzi, the attention paid to current material was extended also to supplementing the existing holdings of older books on as wide a scale as possible. His declared aim to make...Paisey, D. L.
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Journal article
Two new Italian printing centres of the sixteenth century
IN April 1980 the Department of Printed Books bought two extremely rare books, each of which adds a new town to our already very rich collection of sixteenth-century Italian imprints. While these books are not unrecorded, it is most unlikely that a copy of either of them has ever previously...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
The acquisitions system of the Department of Printed Books in the 1870s
PANIZZI'S years as Keeper (1837-56) were the revolutionary period in the history of the Department of Printed Books. After such a turbulent time consolidation was needed and this was provided first by John Winter Jones who was Keeper from 1856 to 1866. His successor was Thomas Watts, a man of...Harris, P. R.
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Journal article
Panizzi and Madden
IN a publication celebrating Antonio Panizzi's centenary, an article on his dealings with his mortal enemy, Sir Frederic Madden, the Keeper of Manuscripts, might seem to strike a jarring note. They nevertheless make a tale well worth the telling. The epic feud between these two great public servants is a...Borrie, Michael
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Journal article
An early thirteenth-century Low Countries booklist
IN British Library MS. Harley 2720, a copy of the Thebaid of Statius, at the bottom right hand corner of fol. 85v, the last page of the text, is a list of twenty-four or twenty-five titles of books or shorter works and four items associated with writing (wax, a seal,...Watson, Andrew G.
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Journal article
Some uncollected letters of Andrew Marvell
EARLIER this year the British Library acquired an unpublished letter of Marvell to Sir Henry Thompson of Escrick, dated 16 December 1675. Sir Henry (c. 1627-84), the second of the five sons of Richard Thompson of Kilham and his wife Anne Thompson, nee Nelthorpe, was a successful wine merchant, knighted...Kelliher, Hilton
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Journal article
Gladstone and Panizzi
THERE were several strands in Gladstone's relation with Panizzi, whom he came to call this very true, trusty, hearty friend. Panizzi made his English debut in the 1820s in Liverpool, where John Gladstone was a merchant prince, and he made it under the patronage of William Ewart the future Prime...Foot, M. R. D.
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Journal article
The Department of Manuscripts' George Eliot Holdings
'MR. LEWES had set his mind on their going after our death to the British Museum', wrote George Eliot of the manuscripts of her works in a letter to William Blackwood. In G. H. Lewes's lifetime the autograph manuscripts of her works had been inscribed and presented by her to...Waley, Daniel
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Journal article
The Lumley Library: a supplementary checklist
THE notes that follow relate to some eighty-nine printed books and manuscripts from the collection of John, Lord Lumley (1534-1609), on which new information has become available since the publication in 1956 by Sears Jayne and Francis Johnson of the 1609 Catalogue of the Lumley Library from a manuscript in...Selwyn, D. G.
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Journal article
A new portrait of George Eliot?
FOR an author who was at once both lionized in some quarters, and despised in others, it is remarkable that descriptions of George Eliot's appearance are so much at variance. On one hand is the unkind, but memorable yet still unattributed line, 'Have you seen a horse, sir? Then you...Goldman, Paul
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Journal article
A Shahnama from Transoxiana
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has recently acquired an unusual, and stylistically rare, illustrated copy of the Shahnama (Book of Kings) by Firdawsi (Or. 13859). The latter part of the manuscript, which might have included a colophon, is missing but the miniatures appear to be in the...Titley, Norah M.
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Journal article
An unidentified Italian publisher's device: the knight on oxback
IN November 1891 the British Museum bought from Leo S. Olschki, the bookseller who was at that time established in Venice but later moved to Florence, a small liturgical work in 16mo format without imprint or date, and with the title printed in red as follows (abbreviations resolved): Diurnum Romanum:...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
The Blenheim Papers
THE papers of John, 1st Duke of Marlborough, his wife, Sarah, and his son-in-law, Charles 3rd Earl of Sunderland, as well as of other members of the Spencer, Churchill, and related families, formerly kept at Blenheim Palace, were acquired by the British Library in 1978. They were originally offered to...Hudson, J. P.
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Journal article
Socinian books with the Raków imprint in the British Library
DURING the Reformation, Poland, with her religious tolerance, became known as an asylum haereticorum in which various trends in the New Faith peacefully coexisted with the official Catholic Church, and religious refugees from abroad found safety from persecution by both the Inquisition and Protestant theologians. One of the most distinguished...Swiderska, H.
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Journal article
Joaquin Ibarra, 1725-1785: a tentative list of holdings in the reference division of the British Library
THREE printers in eighteenth-century Spain are commonly regarded as the leaders of the revival in printing standards in that country. Of the three, Joaquin Ibarra, Benito Monfort, and Antonio de Sancha, it is Ibarra who is generally considered to be pre-eminent.Whitehead, H. G.
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Journal article
'This so-called autobiography': Anthony Trollope, 1812-1882
'THERE is perhaps no career of life so charming as that of a successful man of letters', Trollope declares in a happy moment, adding that 'it is in the consideration which he enjoys that the successful author finds his richest reward.' A good deal of the interest and fascination of...Brown, Sally
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Journal article
Vignettes in early nineteenth-century London editions of Mozart's operas
ON 21 June 1737 the royal assent was given to a measure entitled: An Act to explain and amend so much of an Act, made in the Twelfth Year of the Reign of Queen Anne, intituled, An Act for reducing the Laws relating to Rogues, Vagabonds, sturdy Beggars, and Vagrants,...King, Alec Hyatt
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Journal article
Some notes on seventeenth-century continental hospitals
SIR HANS SLOANE (1660-1753), the eminent Stuart and Georgian physician, was an avid collector of historical manuscripts, particularly those relating to all branches of medicine and the allied sciences. His collection, an original nucleus of the British Museum, remains one of the most important archives for research into the medical...Alsop, J. D.
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Journal article
The paint surfaces in the Psalter of Henry of Blois
THE condition of the miniatures in the Psalter of Henry of Blois, British Library MS. Cotton Nero C. IV, has long been a subject of interest to students of Romanesque illumination. Those who have commented upon this problem agreed that originally the miniatures were fully painted. At some point, the...Haney, Kristine Edmondson
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: Acquisitions 1975-1980: English Books 1501-1800
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: Acquisitions 1975-1980: English Books 1501-1800.Archibald, Jean ; Jannetta, M. J.
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Journal article
Note: The Spanish Scala Celi
The Scala celi in Spanish, in the edition with which I am here concerned, is a small printed work of only twenty quarto leaves. It has nothing whatever to do with much longer works of the same title (but in Latin) with which it has been confused. Haebler, for example,...Rhodes, D. E.
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Journal article
The General Catalogue of printed books, 1881-1981
ON 30 April 1881 George Bullen, the Keeper of Printed Books, laid before the Trustees of the British Museum the first printed part of the catalogue of books in his department. When completed twenty-five years later, the catalogue, containing about two million entries, became and remained for half a century...Chaplin, A. H.
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Journal article
Thomas Wilkinson of Yanwath, friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge
AT the very northernmost border of Westmorland, a couple of miles before the train enters Penrith station from the south, the observant traveller will be struck by the appearance, immediately to the left of the embankment, of a large farmhouse dominated by a fine fourteenth-century peel-tower, built in the traditional...Kelliher, Hilton
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Journal article
'A pleasing example of skill in old age': Sir Christopher Wren and Marlborough House
THE lease of the site of what was to become Marlborough House was first granted to the Duke of Marlborough by the Crown in 1708. The Duke left the whole matter of the projected town house to his Duchess, so the choice of architect was hers. In her own words:...Searle, Arthur
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Journal article
Antonio de Sancha, 1720-1790: a tentative list of holdings in the reference division of the British Library
THE remarkable improvement in printing standards in eighteenth-century Spain is generally considered to have been due to the work of Joaquin Ibarra. However, an almost equal place must be accorded to his contemporary Antonio de Sancha, whose printing skills came to rival Ibarra's, and whose literary formation and enthusiasms possibly...Whitehead, H. G.
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Journal article
A side-light on Panizzi in the letters of Prosper Mérimée
THIS is an attempt to break into a patch of silence and a zone of half-light in the later years of Sir Anthony Panizzi. The silence and obscurity are the result of a historical accident. The bulk of Panizzi's papers and correspondence has been preserved - it is available now...Brodhurst, Audrey C.
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Journal article
Antoine De Guiscard, 'Abbé de la Bourlie', 'Marquis de Guiscard'
SOME wars more than others offer scope to the hopeful military adventurer armed with plausible projects. The chevalier d'industrie flourished mightily in the War of the Spanish Succession, as the papers of the 1st Duke of Marlborough reveal. The imagination of the military projector was admirably stimulated by the obstacles...Jones, Peter
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Journal article
Rembertus Fresen and his writings
THREE small books in the British Library, all printed in northern Germany towards the end of the sixteenth century, are of unusual interest both for their author and for their printers. Unfortunately it has to be confessed that all three were accidentally omitted from the British Museum's Short-title Catalogue of....Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
Swift, Oxford, and the composition of Queen's speeches, 1710-1714
SWIFT'S involvement in the composition of Queen's speeches during the years of the Oxford ministry is almost a commonplace of his biography, and statements in the Journal to Stella provide the evidence for his importance in government circles. 'I was at Court, where every body had their Birthday Cloaths on,...Downie, J. A. ; Woolley, David
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Journal article
Manifestations of Arthur Waley: some bibliographical and other notes
IF Ezra Pound's assertion that the great ages of literature are always allied with great ages of translation is true, then those interested in the work of what Cyril Connolly called 'the Modern Movement' would have ample justification, like Connolly in his book, for including in their collections Arthur Waley's...Johns, Francis A.
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Journal article
Early Ottoman miniature painting: two recently acquired manuscripts in the British Library
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has recently acquired two illustrated Ottoman manuscripts. Historically and stylistically important, they are welcome additions to the small but select collection of some sixty illustrated Turkish manuscripts in the British Library. It is only comparatively recently that Turkish miniatures, unlike Persian, have...Titley, Norah M.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: Dutch acquisitions
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: Dutch acquisitions.Simoni, Anna E. C.
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Journal article
Bagford and Sloane
THE way in which over a hundred volumes of John Bagford collections were acquired for the Harleian Library after his death in 1716 is well known to bibliographers. However, the acquisition by Hans Sloane of several other volumes compiled by Bagford, including one which contained the Gutenberg leaf discussed by...Nickson, Margaret
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, German Section
Lists of notable acquisitions often concentrate on the expensive and rare: this mixed baker's dozen is, on the whole, no exception. Some of the books listed chronologically here are not only rare but unique, some are of obvious historical or scholarly importance, some are beautiful. All are, I hope, interesting;...Paisey, D. L.
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Journal article
The composition of the manuscript of Christine de Pizan's Collected Works in the British Library: a reassessment
THE exquisite manuscript copy of Christine de Pizan's Collected Works, one of the greatest treasures of the British Library (Harley MS. 4431), is well known to scholars of late medieval literature and art. A splendid frontispiece depicts the first owner, Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, the wife of King Charles VI...Hindman, Sandra
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Journal article
Fernando Pessoa, poet, publisher, and translator
FERNANDO PESSOA is widely considered to be the greatest Portuguese poet of the twentieth century and a major writer of European stature. His enigmatic personality and the potent combination of poetic genius and metaphysics in his verse have fascinated a wide variety of readers both in Portugal and abroad. His...Howes, R. W.
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Journal article
Printing with gold in the fifteenth century
Gold printing in the fifteenth century is very rare. There are only two printers who are known to have applied this technique. One of them was Erhard Ratdolt who first used gold for printing a gloriously spectacular full page of dedication in a number of copies of his editio princeps...Carter, Victor ; Hellinga, Lotte ; Parker, Tony
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Journal article
The book of Franciscan saints by Cornelius Thielmans, 1610: a question of title
On 31 August 1974 the British Library received as part of the Van Stuwe donation the gift of a book in small quarto entitled Cort Verhael van het Leven der Heijlighen van S[.] Franciscus Oirden Met Haer Levende Figuren Wt Diuersche schyvers [sic] genomen Deur Den E. P. Broeder Cornelius...Simoni, Anna E. C.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Manuscripts: acquisitions January-December 1981
Recent acquisitions: Department of Manuscripts: acquisitions January-December 1981.Simoni, Anna E. C.
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Journal article
Accounts of the conduct of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 1704-1742
SARAH, Duchess of Marlborough's self-justifying narrative of her years at Court, An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough attracted a considerable amount of attention at its first publication in 1742, and has since frequently been used as an historical source. For not only had she been...Harris, Frances
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1980-1982: Hispanic section
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1980-1982: Hispanic section.Whitehead, H. G.
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Journal article
Day's Service Book,1560-1565
The period of gestation of this article has been truly elephantine. I first became interested in Day's Service Book in 1934 when working in the Westminster Abbey Library and I solved-to my own satisfaction-the main problem which it presents over twenty years ago. Its publication has, however, been delayed by...Nixon, Howard M.
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Journal article
'My darling baby': Charles Kingsley's letters to his wife
A few days before his marriage on 10 January 1844 to Frances Grenfell, 'Fanny' as she was called by her family, Charles Kingsley wrote to his bride-to-be about their honeymoon, 'shall I bring down all our letters to Cheddar?-I think so. -My baby, we will classify them, & put the...Wright, C. J.
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Journal article
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1982-March 1983: English books 1501-1800
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1982 - March 1983: English books 1501-1800.Archibald, Jean ; Jannetta, M. J.
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Journal article
The making of the Harley Psalter
The artists of later Anglo-Saxon England are particularly noted for the lively and delicate multi-coloured line drawings which feature in some sixty of the illuminated manuscripts which have come down to us from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. These drawings are in distinct contrast to the often rather...Backhouse, Janet
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Journal article
Two East Slavonic Primers: Lvov, 1574 and Moscow, 1637
Cultural life in Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries differed from cultural life in Western Europe in two important respects. Works of literature and scholarship were not written in the spoken vernacular (Russian), but in Church Slavonic, and the predominant medium for conveying thought was not the printed book,...Thomas, Christine
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Journal article
A mysterious Italian newsletter of 1517
'MYSTERIOUS' seems to be the most appropriate word to describe a newsletter, printed on only two leaves in quarto, and purchased by the Department of Printed Books of the British Library in August 1981, since it has taken a year of continuous research and puzzled contemplation to reach a conclusion...Rhodes, D. E.
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Journal article
The Mainz indulgences of 1454/5: a review of recent scholarship
THE earliest extant piece of European printing from movable type with which an absolute date can be associated is a Papal Letter of Indulgence which bears the printed date 1454 and the handwritten purchase date 22 October 1454. Forty-nine other printed copies of this Indulgence are known, some unsold and...Ing, Janet
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Journal article
Alban Berg and the BBC
Edward Clark (1888-1962), who was a programme planner with the BBC from 1927 to 1936, had been introduced to Arnold Schoenberg after a performance of the latter's symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande in Berlin in 1910. He was thereafter an ardent champion of the music of Schoenberg (whose pupil he...Chadwick, Nicholas
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Journal article
Was Jacques Le Forestier the printer of the Horae Ad Usum Sarum of 1495?
THE British Library and the Bodleian Library both own a copy of a Book of Hours for Sarum use dated 1495, but without indication of place of printing or printer's name. Two Gothic types are employed for the book, one measuring 113 mm, the other 63 mm for twenty lines,...Baurmeister, Ursula
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Journal article
The use of William Caxton's type 3 by John Lettou and William de Machlinia in the printing of their Yearbook 35 Henry VI, c.1481-1482
WILLIAM CAXTON'S Type 3, which was the second type used by him when setting up his business in Westminster in 1476, was a fresh casting of a sharply cut, well-aligned Gothic by Johan Veldener, a typographer then active in the Low Countries. It measures 135 mm over twenty lines. The...Partridge, W. J.
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Journal article
The development of the collections of the Department of Printed Books, 1846-1875
In June 1872 a special Sub-committee of the Trustees of the British Museum considered a report prepared by W. B. Rye, the Keeper of Printed Books, on the acquisitions system of his department. They expressed great satisfaction with it, but asked that a further report should be produced showing what...Harris, P. R.
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Journal article
An anonymous guidebook to Rome, 1677
FOR well over a century (perhaps for two centuries) the British Museum has owned a book of 192 pages in an unusually small format, 24mo, which has remained hidden and unnoticed in the general catalogue under the unobtrusive heading 'S., P. de''. The title is Nuouo metodo per acquistare brieuemente...Rhodes, D. E.
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Journal article
Bartolommeo Sanvito and an antique motif
A curious motif appears at the foot of the frontispiece of the celebrated copy of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, written and probably illuminated by Bartolommeo Sanvito, in the British Library (Department of Manuscripts, MS. Royal 14.C.III, fol. 2). This consists of a group of three putti, the...Evans, M. L.
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Journal article
Holywell House: a Gothic villa at St Albans
HOLYWELL HOUSE, when the Dowager Lady Spencer first came to live there in November 1783, was a small and rather run-down country house on the southern edge of St Albans: one of many properties inherited by John Spencer of Althorp at the death of his redoubtable and fabulously wealthy grandmother,...Pattie, T. S.
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Journal article
The library of the Royal Philharmonic Society
During the period from 1790 to the early 1830s, quite a number of organizations came into being in London to provide public musical entertainment of various kinds. The only one of them still active today is the Philharmonic Society, which was established in 1813 and received the title 'Royal' exactly...King, Alec Hyatt
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: selected acquisitions, mainly from the period 1979-1985 Map Library
A PREVIOUS article (British Library Journal, v (1979), pp. 181-97) provided partial coverage for the period 1968-78, with the promise of a further instalment to include those items which were unavoidably omitted. This article completes the listing for the earlier period, but can give only a partial account of acquisitions...Campbell, Tony
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Journal article
Obiya Ihei, a Japanese provincial publisher
Commercial publishing came of age in Japan during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). Both at the beginning and at the end of this period there was a vogue for experimenting with movable type, but from the middle of the seventeenth century the burgeoning publishing industry relied almost exclusively on wood-block printing,...Kornicki, P. F.
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Journal article
Julian Marshall and the British Museum: music collecting in the later nineteenth century
In the second volume of Sir George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians which appeared in 1880, there is a descriptive list of private music libraries in the British Isles. First, understandably enough, is the Royal Music Library at Buckingham Palace; the next two libraries listed are those of Sir...Searle, Arthur